turtledovefandomcom-20200216-history
Talk:Gary Cooper
Whatever happened to Gary Cooper, the strong, silent type? Turtle Fan 04:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC) I fear he gave birth to the Keanu Reeves type, the blank, unresponsive type. TR 04:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC) Samurai and Cowboys The bit about Japanese soldiers cheering Gary Cooper in a Hawaii movie house reminded me of the scene in Peking where McGill goes into a Japanese film house and watches a samurai flick. He thinks its like a cowboy film back home except for swords instead of six-shooters. This seems to be a "Turtledove's Tropes" item to me. What do you think? ML4E (talk) 21:07, August 26, 2015 (UTC) :I'd vote no. The DOI/ETB scene was more about how the Japanese found defeat to be the ultimate dishonor, couple with their own view of themselves as "civilized". Thus, the "uncivilized" vanquished Indians were distasteful to the Japanese sense of honor, prompting the Japanese to side with the "civilized" cowboys. :As for the TWPE scene: film historians make a big deal out of the "samurai films=western" trope, so it's not unique to HT. TR (talk) 20:03, September 4, 2015 (UTC) Delete Not relevant to understanding the world of DOI.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:29, July 25, 2016 (UTC) :Wrongo. Illustrates how the Japanese soldiers were similar to Americans despite different cultures. Something similar occurs in TWTCE when Pete McGill goes to see a Samurai film and thinks how similar it is to the Cowboy films he would normally see. ML4E (talk) 17:59, July 25, 2016 (UTC) ::The correlation between Samurais and Cowboys in film is a truth universally acknowledged, and is not unique to HT by any means.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 18:15, July 25, 2016 (UTC) I'm ok with moving this one. TR (talk) 19:10, July 26, 2016 (UTC) :Does that make me the tie-breaker? Because I'm just not sure. I guess I'd say that, if both sides are equally convincing, we should err on the side of maintaining the status quo. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:59, July 26, 2016 (UTC) ::It might be time to reconsider this one, as standards having tightened a little bit.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 09:05, September 30, 2016 (UTC) ::I don't recall any tightening standards. My position remains the same. ML4E (talk) 18:42, September 30, 2016 (UTC) :::Since this was discussed, articles with more substance have been deleted, leaving little reason to keep this one, which only mentions the Samurai movies=Westerns cliché which is common in OTL.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 20:32, September 30, 2016 (UTC) ::::I'm going to throw my vote in with ML4E simply because I find Jonathan's efforts to bluff his way into creating precedent ex nihilo so very tiresome. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:51, September 30, 2016 (UTC) :::::I just don't see any reason to keep this article in its own right, rather than letting Cooper's entry in Performance Arts References in Turtledove's Work suffice. It makes the points: 1) Gary Cooper was America's heroic leading man in 1930-40s films. That situation was the same as in OTL, and gives no special insight to the DoI world. 2) Westerns and Samurai films use the same basic plot lines and stock characters, which has often been acknowledged in OTL, so there is no DoI insight either. Cooper doesn't appear directly (like George Raft did in The War That Came Early), and doesn't play a background role in the series (like being mentioned as giving a speech at a California rally to rouse support for kicking the Japs out of Hawaii). Nothing about his life went differently in the DoI timeline. ::::::I think you are overstating the public knowledge of the similarities between Westerns and Samurai films, especially at the time the novels were written. That became well known for film buffs in the 1960s but not to the general public until more recently if then. Further, it is a clever way for Turtledove to demonstrate the similarities between the Japanese soldiers and Americans. If the movie name had been used, then I would agree that this be displayed in the movie article and Cooper be moved if he had been mentioned as the star. However, it wasn't so this is the place to document Turtledove's observation. :::::For comparison, Humphrey Bogart has been deleted and Wyatt Earp is about to be deleted, even though their references in HT works are more substantial than Cooper's. To wit, Bogart in Southern Victory starred in a film with a slightly different title from the OTL counterpart, and in TWTCE his 1943 movie was crappy and forgettable, because ''Casablanca'' was never written in a timeline where there was never Vichy France. Earp's article simply states that in Southern Victory he never went to Tombstone. Cooper's article is even less eventful than any of those.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:04, October 1, 2016 (UTC) ::::::Again, neither of the above offer insight into society at large. The Cooper article does so by noting the similar reactions of the audiences, notwithstanding your dismissal of it as a "cliché". You say "Westerns and Samurai films use the same basic plot lines and stock characters, which has often been acknowledged in OTL". Fine. Give me a WWII novel that does so, whether historical fiction or AH. My argument is that this is a literary touch by Turtledove that is not often done. My guess is it hasn't been done at all before he did. ML4E (talk) 16:51, October 1, 2016 (UTC)